poems

Leavetaking And Homecoming

Posted on by rita kowats

4 of July

 

Can hopeless Americans regain hope by personifying their country as the Prodigal Son?….

Luke 15:11-32 (NIV)
The Parable of the Lost Son

11 Jesus continued: “There was a man who had two sons. 12 The younger one said to his father, ‘Father, give me my share of the estate.’ So he divided hiView from Washington Passs property between them. 13 “Not long after that, the younger son got together all he had, set off for a distant country and there squandered his wealth in wild living.14 After he had spent everything, there was a severe famine in that whole country, and he began to be in need. 15 So he went and hired himself out to a citizen of that country, who sent him to his fields to feed pigs. 16 He longed to fill his stomach with the pods that the pigs were eating, but no one gave him anything.
17 “When he came to his senses, he said, ‘How many of my father’s hired servants have food to spare, and here I am starving to death! 18 I will set out and go back to my father and say to him: Father, I have sinned against heaven and against you. 19 I am no longer worthy to be called your son; make me like one of your hired servants.’ 20 So he got up and went to his father.
“But while he was still a long way off, his father saw him and was filled with compassion for him; he ran to his son, threw his arms around him and kissed him.
21 “The son said to him, ‘Father, I have sinned against heaven and against you. I am no longer worthy to be called your son.’
22 “But the father said to his servants, ‘Quick! Bring the best robe and put it on him. Put a ring on his finger and sandals on his feet. 23 Bring the fattened calf and kill it. Let’s have a feast and celebrate. 24 For this son of mine was dead and is alive again; he was lost and is found.’ So they began to celebrate.

 

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The Gift of Exploration
Dove that stayed in the open, outside the dovecote,
brought back and housed again where neither night nor day poses danger—
she knows what protection is….The other doves not exposed to peril do not know this tenderness.
The heart that has been fetched back can feel most at home.
Vitality is freed through what it has renounced.
Over Nothingness the universe bends.
Ah, the ball we dared to throw fills the hands differently on its return:
it brings back the reality of its journey.
Rainer Maria Rilke
Uncollected Poems in A Year with Rilke: Daily Readings from the Best of Rainer Maria Rilke
Anita Barrows and Joanna Macy

 

4 of July

Response

I am depressed about the behavior of my country towards its most vulnerable citizens and towards  world citizens. These juxtaposed readings, however, give me hope that it is possible to return to more compassionate behavior.  We have flown the coup and out there we are testing the limits of some of America’s cherished values: independence and freedom.  Hopefully we will learn again to be interdependent.

While my country is away from itself, my job is to “become more of the change I want to happen,” to learn and be interdependent.  My job is to continue to hold up a mirror to my country about how selfish behavior affects others.  My job is to trust that my country can and will come home to itself.  My job is to welcome and forgive when she is ready to come home.

 

 

 

 

Photo Credit: http://sonorannews.com/2017/06/29/enjoy-cool-safe-fourth-july-scottsdale/

Dove: “God Through Anne Terri With The Holy Spirit <a href=”http://www.flickr.com/photos/32289838@N04/39537614341″>Dove in Theo Sur Mer</a> via <a href=”http://photopin.com”>photopin</a&gt; <a href=”https://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-nc-nd/2.0/”>(license)</a&gt;

Soul-Stretching

Posted on by rita kowats

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Our attempts at self-protection
cause us to live
in a cramped corner of our lives.

 

Frank Ostaseski “A Friend until the End”
Lion’s Roar July 2018

 

Senescence has overtaken my back, but I am releasing pain and regaining flexibility by doing PNF stretches and swimming. Compared to five months ago, I am literally a walking miracle. I often meditate in the water, where this analogy came to me.

Stretching
A miracle for the back
Why not for the soul?

Pull push
Pull push
Breathing out ego
Breathing in light

Synced simultaneous soul-stretches
Creating space for the divine.

© Rita H Kowats 6-25-18

Hour Glass Photo Credit: https://pixabay.com/en/hourglass-sands-of-time-woman-man-1356070/

Star Date 6-13-18

Posted on by rita kowats

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My postage-stamp-sized floors shine,
Reflecting my clean and polished soul
(“Cleanliness is next to godliness?”)

Sitting still I bask in the shine while I can-
Before splotches of spinach and sin
Soil soul and floor yet again.

Alas, the leaf blower beneath my window
Is the bell calling me
Back to mindfulness
(I hate this infernal cacaphony of chaos)

Breathing in, I welcome peace
Breathing out, I release this edginess.
Breathing in, I rest in Presence.
Breathing out, I release anger.

Giving thanks for this day humanly lived.

© Rita H Kowat 6-13-18

 

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photo credits:  mop and bucket <a href=”http://worldartsme.com/”>WorldArtsMe</a&gt;

leaf blower https://unhealingmedic.deviantart.com/art/Leaf-Blower-289176773

star http://simpleicon.com/star-2.html

Breaching The Divide

Posted on by rita kowats

o is for open

 

Simple-song
Marge Piercy

When we are going toward someone we say
you are just like me
your thoughts are my brothers and sisters
word matches word how easy to be together.

When we are leaving someone we say
how strange you are
we cannot communicate
we can never agree
how hard, hard and weary to be together.

We are not different nor alike
but each strange in our leather bodies
sealed in skin and reaching out clumsy hands
and loving is an act
that cannot outlive
the open hand
the open eye
the door in the chest standing open.

 

 

This poem drew me into meditation this morning and I have strolled through its many nuances throughout the day. We allow the other’s difference to grow a wedge between us because we don’t understand it, and we can’t control what we don’t understand. We would rather muck around in the divide than risk the outstretched hand and the open door in the chest.

In their book, Blindspot: Hidden Biases of Good People, Mahzarin R. Banaji and Anthony G. Greewald describe their study which concluded that every human being fills in what we don’t know with what we think we know. In observing myself, I see that it is my ego that fills in what I don’t know, rather than the self that lives in divine presence. This self is strong enough to welcome that which is strange in the other, that which reaches out with clumsy hands.

My spiritual practice comes in the form of a pause. I pause before I judge. I breathe in respect and release fear. I breathe in love and release judgment. Once in a while it works. Our human instinct is to protect our ego, but the pause interrupts the knee-jerk impulse to insert it into the strange, unknown spaces of the other. The pause lets in the Spirit who places clumsy hand in clumsy hand.

 

Photo Credit: Photopin.com

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

photo credit: Michael W. May <a href=”http://www.flickr.com/photos/14609664@N06/5376777351″>o is for open</a> via <a href=”http://photopin.com”>photopin</a&gt; <a href=”https://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-nc-nd/2.0/”>(license)</a&gt;

Heron-Patience

Posted on by rita kowats

If you have never seen a Great Blue Heron walking, I assure you, it is quite amusing.  These magnificent birds are as comical as we are in our daily ego-grasping endeavors.  If we don’t laugh, we cry, so let’s have a laugh at our expense.

 

 

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photo credit: DFChurch <a href=”http://www.flickr.com/photos/77056186@N00/25777120120″>Little Blue</a> via <a href=”http://photopin.com”>photopin</a&gt; <a href=”https://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-nc-nd/2.0/”>(license)</a&gt;

Innocence Re-Membered

Posted on by rita kowats

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Epilogue

On my way home I passed the girls and stopped to chat.  They showed me each new leaf on a shrub they had discovered and their brother told me the story of the Tyrannosaurus Rex that lumbered across his T- shirt.

Also, this…

from “A Brief for the Defense” in Refusing Heaven, Jack Gilbert

We must risk delight. We can do without
pleasure, but not delight. Not enjoyment. We must have
the stubbornness to accept our gladness
in the ruthless furnace of this world. To make injustice the
only measure of our attention is to praise
the Devil.

 

 

 

 

photo credit: James Bowe <a href=”http://www.flickr.com/photos/29848680@N08/41372593744″>Buttercups</a&gt; via <a href=”http://photopin.com”>photopin</a&gt; <a href=”https://creativecommons.org/licenses/by/2.0/”>(license)</a&gt;

Free-Flowing Action

Posted on by rita kowats

 

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From Rilke’s Book of Hours: Love Poems to God
trans.Anita Barrows and Joanna Macey

1,12
I believe in all that has never yet been spoken.
I want to free what waits within me
so that what no one has dared to wish for
may for once spring clear
without my contriving.
If this is arrogant, God, forgive me,
but this is what I need to say.
May what I do flow from me like a river,
no forcing and no holding back,
the way it is with children.
Then in these swelling and ebbing currents,
these deepening tides moving out, returning,
I will sing you as no one ever has,
streaming through widening channels
into the open sea.

 

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Conflicting Images Emerge:

-No forcing, no holding back

-But rivers can overflow,.wrecking havoc on nearby communities

-“Let justice roll down like a river,” Amos 5:24

-The Colorado river carved out the Grand Canyon over a period of millions of years

-Rivers plunge over steep ledges into pools below. Hear the roar of Niagra Falls and Victoria Falls in Zambia

-The River Dee in Scotland meandering along peacefully, allowing fly fishers the luxury of patience.

I resist the drive to dualize by insisting that I act this way and not that way. What matters, in Rilke’s mind, is that my action be true to itself, authentic.

Afterall,

“Eventually all things merge into one, and a river runs through it.” Norman MacLean

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

photo credit: ShinyPhotoScotland N08/24432298457″>Mist in the Carse of Gowrie via photopin (license)

Imagine the Great Presence

Posted on by rita kowats

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Today dawns on the new reality of a broken deal with Iran and missile fire exchanged between Iran in Syria and Israel. We wait for the other shoe to drop. Life on the edge is hard. Now, more than ever we are called to pay attention so we can feel the stirring of the Great Presence and receive its wisdom and consolation.

 

You, darkness, of
whom I am born—
I love you more than the flame
that limits the world
to the circle it illumines
and excludes all the rest.
But the dark embraces everything:
shapes and shadows, creatures and me,
people, nations—just as they are.
It lets me imagine
a great presence stirring beside me.
I believe in the night.

Rainer Marie Rilke
I, II Rilke’s Book of Hours trans. Anita Barrows, Joanna Macy

 

Photo by Lennart kcotsttiw from Pexels

Breach the Beach

Posted on by rita kowats

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I settled into my meditation on the dock this morning, luxuriating in black bird twitters and the flash of red wings. The sun on my back thawed my winterized bones.  Ahh, how good to be alone with the divine… until the holy muse quietly morphed into a magnificent Great Blue Heron holding vigil in the water lilies.  Her faithful practice spoke to me,”Stand still. Watch and wait.  Your authentic self will catch up with you.”

 

Beach Combing